voice training thoughts

i've been doing some light voice training, and i noticed something.

pitch an absolute measurement, but for each person there's a range of "low" and "high" that i can hear through their vocal effort/strain. a deep voice on a cis woman in absolute pitch is at least a full octave above mine (a3-g3 vs a2-g2), and yet to my ear it doesn't sound like it's higher than mine. in fact, a lot of times it sounds lower, in part because i can hear that it's at the bottom of their vocal range.

this even applies to people who have higher voices. my wife's voice is like c3-e4, and when she's tired she lowers to a3 or g2. to my ear, when she's at the bottom of her range, she sounds deep. i can hear her voice creaking, her vocal cords at the bottom of their range, her chest voice coming through.

comparatively, when i'm using a higher pitch, i don't sound like i'm using my full range. i sound like i'm pushing. some of this is due to my inexperience with this kind of work, but some is that my body is shaped to produce vocal sounds in one range and i'm not using that range.

the way people in vocal training videos on youtube talk about it (fairy princess lucy, renee yoxon, trans voice lessons, seattle voice lab, olivia flanagan, etc), you'll adapt and over time your voice will grow into the new range as default. that probably true, but hard to trust, as is always the case lol.

i guess we'll see where i'm at in my voice journey in a year. i'm also trash at makeup and dressing femininely and "performing femininity" socially, so it's not like this is the final puzzle piece in my transition, but it feels more immutable than the rest, given it's a change to my physical body that i can't do with a bit of medicine but consistent hard work.

the work is the work.